August 22, 2006

Librarianship
has for some time been immersed in a conversation about relevance. What value do libraries embody in the age of
the Amazoogles, cell phones with
computational power rivaling early space vehicles, and home computers with a
couple terabytes of storage?

Libraries have traditionally been a pull technology… you have to go to a physical place, find the item you
want (generally known beforehand), and pull it off the shelf.

Increasingly we live in a push information world. TV
pushes their take on the news at us, RSS feeds push the headline news and what
has changed on the Internet… for places we’ve pre-selected, at least.

The following, from the DemocracyNow.org website, is a
chilling commentary on what the corporate news industry is pushing to the American public:

TV Networks Focus on JonBenet Ramsey Case Over NSA Ruling
The major court ruling on the National Security Agency surveillance program has
received scant coverage from the nation’s three major networks. On Thursday,
ABC, CBS and NBC all led their nightly broadcasts with the latest in the 1996
murder case of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. ABC devoted twice as much
time in its broadcast to Ramsey as it did to the NSA story. CBS offered seven
times as much airtime to Ramsey as it did to the NSA story. And NBC devoted 15
times more airtime to Ramsey.

It is hard to know whether this is self-censorship on the
part of Big-News, or simply venal sensationalism (or both), but it is discouraging, and accentuates the importance of
independent sources of information in the future of democracy.

I’m not sure how libraries can effectively compete for the
attention of television viewers, but as traditional sources of news become ever
more co-opted by the infotainment industry, the role of providing a neutral
spectrum of information is increasingly important. System vendors are making it easier for
libraries to set up RSS feeds to alert patrons to newly acquired assets and
community events, and many libraries use them. And Worldcat.org now provides
web-access to records for 1.3 billion items in 10,000 libraries free of charge. It ain’t book-TV, but libraries at least have
a beachhead where other sectors of the information industry have ceased to take
their patrons seriously. The service
model is changing (the role of disclosure becomes paramount: see Lorcan's notes on the Search, Share, and Subscribe, for example), but the mission is still pretty much the same, and needed more than ever.

July 28, 2006

The passage of DOPA (HR 5319), Deleting Online Predators Act, is
the latest effort on the part of the Congress to manage the unmanageable (and perhaps do some fear-mongering among constituents in this election year?). ALA's objection to the legislation was expressed in Beth Yoke's testimony before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. The position is predicated on three premises:1. The legislation will limit access to a broad range of essential interactive web applications in schools and libraries2. It will exacerbate the digital divide, impacting disproportionately those with no or limited computing resources of their own 3. Education and parental involvement are the keys to keeping children safe and helping them to develop judgment that will help them keep themselves safe.

That this sort of legislation would be passed in an election year is not so surprising -- the Internet has become a favorite whipping boy for legislators hoping to evidence their inclination to save us from dangers real and imagined. Who can argue with keeping children safe from predators? In fact, as Yoke's testimony suggests, preventing access in exactly the places where children might be instructed to use such services safely and responsibly will probably leave children less safe. The magnitude of the rejection of this argument (410 -15) is chilling indeed.

A number of discussions on the subject points to it unenforceability, but this is the sort of legislation that enforces itself... or rather, by threatening the withdrawal of funding, 'encourages' affected institutions to self police -- or else. Lets hope cooler heads in the Senate prevail.

Like it or not, the trajectory of increased connectivity is an immutable trend of social and technological change. It pervades our private lives, education, and business. Vague, blunt, clumsy efforts on the part of mostly privileged, middle-aged, white American males will not stem this change, nor keep our children safe from its side effects. Such efforts can, however, further damage our competitiveness by stifling innovation and complicating local decision making and operations in libraries and educational institutions.

-----thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick whose blog post on this topic has links to other interesting commentary on this issue.-----image: When I saw this class-rebuild project on display at the Center for Wooden Boats, i wondered... could that be a....? In fact it was... a Herreschoff 12 1/2 foot gaff rigged keelboat, a craft designed by perhaps the greatest arbiter of beauty in sailing lines. If memory serves, E.B. White's life-long passion for 'messing around in boats' was nurtured on the Maine coast in just such a craft. E.B. White's son, Joel White would later channel this love in his own boat designs. More about White's boats in Wood, Water and Light: Classic Wooden Boats.

December 15, 2005

I must explain for both of my readers in non-US venues (the other three of
you know this no doubt) that America is lurching through a secondary paroxysm
of legislative fear and political blustering that passes for making the country
safe from the threats of terrorism. Part of the current hubbub involves renewal of
the so-called Patriot Act, so named to cow legislators harboring the delusional
notion that civil liberties are sort of THE POINT of the US-flavor of patriotism. Patrick Henry didn’t say “Give me liberty, or
give me access to your library records.” He probably didn’t even have a library card.

One of the stories in the news this week concerns this particularly controversial part of the
act. According to a story on NPR:

Agents are particularly frustrated that they cannot get
approval to use Section 215 of the Patriot Act, called the "library
provision" by Patriot Act critics because it could be used to search
library or any other business records.

One FBI e-mail from 2003 complains that the Office of
Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) "should be embarrassed that the FBI
has used this valuable tool to fight terrorism exactly ZERO times."

The e-mail goes on:

"The inability of FBI investigators to use this seemingly
effective tool has had a direct and clearly adverse impact on our terrorism
cases. While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists
benefit from OIPR's failure to let us use the tools given to us."

Remember when librarians were characterized as middle aged
women with sneakers and hair in a bun? We’ve
come a long way, baby!

The patient reader may be wondering where the Jane
Austen action figure comes into this story. Well, OCLC Research just had its annual multicultural, poly-ethnic, northern-hemispherical-winter-solstice-proximal social get together. You know... a Christmas Party. Part of our tradition is a gift-giving
game wherein all participants bring a modest gift (costing about $5 USD). Everyone draws a number from a hat, and
participants sequentially select either one of the wrapped gifts or a gift
already opened by someone else. In the latter case, the victim then can return
to the gift table or victimize another colleague in turn. Continue until all gifts are unwrapped. Its sort Kriss Kringle with a touch of schadenfreud,
and this year’s edition was particularly mirthful. The hands-down winner of the Most Popular
Gift was the Jane Austen action figure pictured above. Jane changed hands a dozen
times before finally coming to rest. Who
would have thought?

I take comfort from being part of a group that is
pigeonholed as radical militants on the one hand, and whose acquisitive instincts
are inflamed to wine-spilling, gaze-averting passion by a Jane Austen action figure on the other. And what
would the action part be, anyway??? That’s
a quill in Jane’s hand, by the way, not a weapon. Perhaps the pen is mightier than the sword?

Happy Holidays, everyone. May all your action figures
have literary merit, and your office parties be as much fun as ours.